I am darn sure those flowers were pink, no matter how many times Google images brings up the images of dark red flowers when faced with my search “pomegranate flowers”. I remember the trees towering over me in my youth. I remember trying to climb them to get the fruit. I never succeeded.
My childhood was filled with many hot days and hours and hours of running after my siblings under the shade of our ever growing pomegranate trees. Those pomegranate trees are gone now. My grandfather got rid of them the day after my dad left for the US and we left to go live with our grandma. They required too much care that no one could provide them.
I do not know if they would have been able to survive had we left them there and I guess I never will. All I know is that part of the sweet emotion that runs through me when I hear the word “nostalgia” is the sweet yet tangy taste of the pomegranate seeds from our trees.
Nostalgia is trying to climb up those trees and reach the fruit hanging from the limbs and never being able to make it.
Nostalgia is catching the pomegranates as our father threw them to us from the top of the trees that we could never reach.
Nostalgia is racing with my siblings to see who could get the most pomegranates.
Nostalgia is bringing the pomegranates back to the kitchen, where our mother sat, criss-cross apple sauce style, and peeled away at the pomegranates because our fingers were not quite strong enough to peel the thick skin just yet.
Nostalgia is spinning under the trees that now bore pink flowers instead of the red fruit and trying to catch the petals that came down despite the defiance of the wind.
Nostalgia is elusive, just like the colors of our pomegranates.
Veil Willow 